Women Unaware of Obesity Link to Breast Cancer?
Although it is becoming a better known fact that obesity is tied to many different kinds of cancer in both women and men, there is still an alarming amount of women who do not know the serious increases in risks associated with certain types of female cancer which also happen to be especially deadly since they are not as easily detected as other types of cancer, who do not understand that obesity increases the likelihood of these female cancers substantially.
One of the cancers that obesity increases the risk of in particular is an endometrial type of cancer, which is especially susceptible to obesity’s associated risk, and many women don’t understand the type of health risks they are taking by being overweight. The reasons that obesity is linked to cancer are many, but a big reason supposedly is that increased body fat means that there is much more (excess) estrogen circulating in the body, which can substantially increase the likelihood of female cancer development.
Here’s some staggering statistics for you. Women who are obese are four times more likely to develop cancers of the uterine lining than women who are of a normal, healthy weight. Now if that’s not a convicing statistic to change one’s lifestyle then I don’t know what is. Obesity also makes women much more likely to develop breast cancer and also colon cancer, so there are two more reasons to make sure weight is kept under tabs.
There are so many ways that weight can be managed these days, so it’s important to look into your options for reducing weight and starting a healthier lifestyle. We have so many information guides online that we can reference to help us reduce weight and manage it effectively, and our knowledge about nutrition and the reasons for obesity are increasing every day, so there’s really all the tools you need to maintain a healthy weight.
Angelina Jolie Shown Breast Feeding in New W Cover
Jeez, I hate to sound a little bitter, and believe me, I have nothing against Angelina Jolie and her beautiful, huge and ever-expanding family, but I’m getting tired of news about her and her family being included in the normal newsworthy sections of news websites and papers. I mean, since when have celebrities and how many babies they plan to have or what they eat for breakfast, been a newsworthy or important item for us to know, for that matter?
Aside from my little tirade, I’m actually going to talk about Angelina and what she did for a very tasteful magazine cover. She is shown cradling one of her new twins with dad Brad Pitt, breastfeeding the baby, with a tiny little hand coming up in to the picture, which makes the moment and the picture all that much more poignant and touching.
I know there have been actresses on covers of magazines bearing their pregnant bellies, but I’ve never seen one with a woman breast feeding her child. It may sound tacky, but it’s actually a very beautiful photograph, and not because Ms. Jolie has the most perfect face on earth right now, but because it’s a picture of mother and child, and everyone looks very content and at peace.
Jolie has been making headlines now for years, first with her single adoption of Maddox, her first boy, adopted from Cambodia, and then steadily began adding new members to her expanding family before and after she met and fell in love with Brad Pitt on the set of their movie Mr. and Ms. Smith, where they play assassins that are married and don’t know what eachother does in their spare time. Yeah, real plausible I know. I’m not a fan of Ms. Jolies acting but I think she is a good person who has done a lot for children.
Did Rita on Dexter Get Breast Implants or is the Actress Really Pregnant?
The actress who plays Rita, Dexter’s sweet girlfriend on the show Dexter which is about a serial killer played by the delicious Michael C Hall, who kills other killers in an attempt to satisfy his violent predisposition without hurting any good people, seems to have sprouted a large pair of breasts on her usually diminuitive frame lately. The funny thing is that her character is pregnant on the show, and we were wondering if the actress is really pregnant in real life.
As we all know as women, your breasts are one of the first things to balloon up and get sore when you first get pregnant. However, the actress who plays Rita is noticeably still a rail with no belly to speak of, yet seems to have vololptuous breasts suddenly as well. We tried to also figure out if it was just a great bra that pushed her up, but to me it actually looks as if she may have possibly gone under the knife.
I could be wrong of course. I don’t have a trained sugeon’s eye or anything, but there was one scene where Rita and Dexter are in a pregnancy yoga class and she turns to the side in a low cut shirt and it looks like she may have gotten implants, but then in other shots, depending on how she was standing and the lighting, it looked like it could either be real breast growth or natural breast enhancement, or it could have been just that she was wearing a very breast enlarging bra perhaps.
I don’t know, if you watched it, you would have noticed too. Of course my boyfriend noticed too, he said that she was very flat chested before, and seemed to have sprouted breasts overnight. Anywho, it’s a great show if you like that kind of stuff, very well acted and has a great cast and neat story lines, if not a bit far fetched. But then again, what TV show isn’t?
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
I know it’s a little late for me to be posting this, but just wanted to let you know that October is breast cancer awareness month, so you will be seeing a lot of pink ribbons out and about this month, and a lot of donations being asked for in the name of the Susan G Komen foundation, which is a foundation that backs advanced breast cancer research and that supports women with breast cancer.
There are a lot of marathons and walkathons that are for the Susan G Komen foundation called Race for the Cure, and my family has taken part in that race on and off since we, like many other families have been personally touched by breast cancer with a dearly beloved aunt of mine passing away, my mother’s close friend and sister.
There are lots of ways we can help find the cure for breast cancer, one of them is to donate in whatever amount you comfortably can to any of the organizations that support breast cancer survivors and breast cancer research. You can also make sure you remind your female loved ones to get their breast cancer screenings and to be vigilant about getting their mammograms, especially if they are past the age of 40 years old.
You can also spread the word about how diet and exercise help to elevate women out of the likely candidate pool for breast cancer, and help by buying special gadgets and items that bear the pink color and ribbon, which means that either all the proceeds or a portion of the proceeds goes to the research of breast cancer.
Perfect Curves Question
I received a question (I don’t think this is the first one of it’s kind as a matter of fact), about a natural breast enhancement product called Perfect Curves. Unfortunately I do not have any knowledge about this particular product, so I provided the answer on the products I knew about (which are on this site as well).
Here is the question (name removed for privacy) :
I have just purchased a 4 month supply of perfect curves breast enhancemet system and was wondering if you have had any feedback about it? I have had x children and my breasts have all but disappeared. Before having my children I was a full c cup and now I am a large A cup - very small B.
Good luck!
Big Brother’s Renny, Keesha and Angie : Fake Boobs?
I’m a fan of the reality show Big Brother (the American version), and have been watching it since season 2. For the past season, season 10 of BB, I’m just now catching up to the episodes, and still haven’t even seen the finale with the finale being 2 episodes away on our DVR, but actually happening a few weeks ago in reality. Thank goodness for DVRs is all I have to say!
Anyways, it seems like this season on Big Brother 10 was the season of big boobs. You’ve got Angie, who has obvious implants, Renny, who may or may not have implants, it’s hard to tell because of her age. Then you have Keesha, who I’m pretty sure has a big set of silicone implants because they do look a bit more natural than they should being that big on such a skinny girl.
Then there’s April, who has real ones, at least I’m pretty sure, although she is a twig otherwise. Her boobs though I do think are real because they hang naturally, although you didn’t really see her in bikinis too much on the show. April said hers were real also at the beginning of the season, where Jerry, the 75 year old guy (the oldest contestant yet on BB), gave them a little feel and confirmed that to the audience.
Will next season of BB be the same? It seems like that show and a lot of other reality shows look for girls with big racks so they can attract the male viewing audience, what do you think?
Big Baby Equals Higher Risk of Breast Cancer?
Being a larger baby, that is, one that weighs more than the average baby and also may be longer than the average accepted size of babies, may actually increase your risk of breast cancer later in life. Or so one study has set out to prove there is a correlation. Why would there be a correlation between these two seemingly non-related facts though? I tried to think of a reason but could not, even racking my brains for something.
Apparently there is a thought that something that happens in the womb when a mother is pregnant with her child may add to an adult’s chances of getting cancer later in life. Particularly the length of the baby at birth is of interest in this study because that is where the strongest correlation is found between baby size and breast cancer later on in life in women.
The exact reason for the correlation, which has in fact been proven to exist in this latest study, is not clear at all at the moment, except for thoughts that like I said, this is related to something that obviously spurs growth in the mother’s uterus during the development of the fetus.
Could it all be a coincidence that one of the strongest linking factors between women studied with breast cancer is a higher birth weight and size, especially the length, as well as the girth of the head of the baby? Maybe, but statistics always prove to be consistent when the trial numbers are as large as they were for this study so I’m inclined to believe there is something to this strange correlation.
Mammograms Ineffective for Most Younger Women
We’ve all heard the “horror” stories of women at a very young age developing breast cancer, and while it is true that this is possible, it is not actually the norm, and does not happen nearly as often as women past 40 or 50 years old getting breast cancer. However, that doesn’t mean the young women shouldn’t use prudence when looking out for breast cancer.
Take for example Christina Applegate, only in her mid thirties who recently underwent a double masectomy when breast cancer was discovered in one of her breasts. It does happen at earlier ages, but usually only if the genetic markers are there or the person has an unusually high likelihood of developing it for lifestyle or environment reasons or something else that may be within control.
The temptation may be for younger women to ask for mammograms, but in fact, the mammogram is supposedly not all that effective for women who are in their thirties, or sometimes even in their forties, for the simple fact that the breast tissue is simply too dense to be read accurately by the mammogram machine. This means that more in depth tests would be needed that also happen to be more expensive and may not even be fully covered for younger women by insurance, such as an MRI.
Doctors say that mammograms for younger women are often inaccurate and may be totally useless in many cases since the tissue is just to dense to be read for any suspicious masses or lumps that could be cancerous. Also, on a mammogram reading, cancer shows up as a white color, but younger women’s breast tissue that is noncancerous also tends to show up in white, making the reading all that much more difficult to accurately decipher, and perhaps causing false postives and false negatives, doing more harm than good.
They say that a digital mammography may be a better option that a traditional mammogram for younger women since the reading may be a little more dependable. So, if you are a younger woman and are concerned about the health of your breasts especially if you have a family background that involves breast cancer on the female side of the family, then you can ask your doctor about the digital option and about what your other options are since you are younger and have a more dense breast tissue to look at.
Breast Tenderness and the Pill
I had to also comment on another thing that was gone over in my last female wellness checkup, and that is the fact that I am trying to get off the birth control pill after almost ten years (given, on and off), of being on the pill. The one I’m on now is a tri phase pill since the low dose actually made me spot more and also gave me feelings of malaise like the tri phase ones do, except it also allowed my skin to break out more unlike the tri phase type since these help with acne breakouts, which were always a problem for me since I was a teenager.
I talked to my doctor about possibly having an IUD (intra uterine device) put in as a form of birth control since I no longer wanted anything to do with oral hormones. I also told her about my mood swings, occasional depression and anxiety, and water weight put on since I’ve been on the pill, and she said those all will still happen around my period time when I am off the pill.
However, my whole thing is I want them to be gone during the times when I’m not on my period and I swear that being on the pill increases all these hormonal side effects in me, albeit with a less severe period, but who cares if you’re experiencing many of the symptoms when you’re not on your period, in return for less period flow when you are on the pill. I’d rather feel normal and human and not be on the pill than have a lighter period personally.
My breasts do seem to gain in size during certain times when I’m on the pill, and it’s not just right before my period, but at certain times, several times during the month. That will hopefully go away once I’m off the pill since I don’t particularly enjoy having sensitive larger breasts that are tender - what’s the point?
Reese Witherspoon Speaks Out on Breast Cancer
I really like Reese Witherspoon. She defies those stereotypes about young, spoiled starlets, and has shown a lot of class, never filmed or photographed stumbling out of clubs, and keeping her two adorable children out of the spotlight as much as possible, as well as putting forther a good example to her young fans by showing her intellect and integrity, and the reports that she is never late to set and is a very hard worker in Hollywood also help drive home to young women that she is exemplary when it comes to work ethic, class, and good parenting.
It was a shame when her marriage to Ryan Phillipe didn’t work out, but even that she carried with utter class and dignity, never smearing him or making outrageous public accusations and embarrassing the family further. Well, now Reese has done another admirable thing as Avon’s ambassador for women’s health, and she has come forth and spoken out on her feelings about breast cancer and how she realized how important it was to get the message out about the importance of early detection in breast cancer, in young and old women alike.
She said she was especially alarmed when she heard the statistic that every three minutes here in the US, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, a breast cancer research statistic that she says she would like to help change, and like to help reduce the effect of advanced cancer as well. Even more interesting is the statistic that supposedly breast cancer has a 97% recovery rate if it is caught before it spreads from the breast to other parts of the body, which is when it becomes especially lethal since it can easily invade the lymph nodes, which carry the cancer cells throughout the body.
Reese Witherspoon especially wants to clarify the myth to women that only older women are at risk for breast cancer since young women are too, and in fact younger women are the ones who usually get the especially agressive forms or hormonally fueled breast cancer that takes the body over faster and is quicker to grow. Hopefully she will spread the word effectively, she certainly has the star power and the following to make a difference.